Diane Macedo | The Keys to Having Incredible Sleep From ABC News Anchor & The Author of The Sleep Fix
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Have trouble getting good quality sleep at night? In this episode, ABC news anchor Diane Macedo shares her research insights to aid you with practical solutions to follow before, during, and after bedtime. Loads of actionable information you surely don’t want to miss.
Key Takeaways From This Episode
Tips for busy people who suffer from insomnia and sleep disorders
Best enjoyable techniques and routines to prepare yourself for bedtime
What can you do to alleviate the short stints of sleep deprivation?
Common myths about destructive sleep
Top recommendations to boost your sleep drive
Disclaimer: All information and views shared on the Live Greatly podcast & the Live greatly website are purely the opinions of the authors, and are not intended to provide medical advice or treatment recommendations. The contents of this podcast & website are intended for informational and educational purposes only. Always seek the guidance of your physician or other qualified health professional when you have any questions regarding your specific health, your sleep, changes to diet and exercise, or any medical conditions.
Resources Mentioned In This Episode
About Diane Macedo
Diane Macedo is currently an anchor and correspondent for ABC News, appearing on Good Morning America, World News Tonight, Nightline, World News Now, and America This Morning, as well as breaking news reports. She’s also an anchor for ABC News Live, where she hosts several daily newscasts and covers breaking news and special events. An alum of Boston College, she lives in New York City with her two children.
Up to sixty percent of the population is estimated to suffer from insomnia, while many more unknowingly struggle with other sleep disorders. Now COVID-19 and the life changes resulting from it have opened up a whole new world of sleep obstacles. So, as we approach the New Year—and hope for a fresh start, how do we learn to sleep well?
Former insomniac Diane sets out to answer this question in her new book THE SLEEP FIX: Practical, Proven, and Surprising Solutions for Insomnia, Snoring, Shift Work, and More (William Morrow, 12/14). Macedo breaks down the science of sleep like never before, undergoing numerous sleep tests and gathering solutions from experts all across sleep science.
Connect with Diane
Website: The Sleep Fix
Facebook: Diane Macedo
Instagram: @dianermacedo
Twitter: @dianermacedo
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Kristel Bauer, the Founder of Live Greatly, is on a mission to help people thrive personally and professionally. She is a corporate wellness expert, Integrative Medicine Fellow, Top Female Keynote Speaker, TEDx speaker & Physician Assistant experienced in Integrative Psychiatry and Functional Medicine.
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Episode Transcript
Diane (Teaser)
I think the golden rule for sleep in general is if you are awake in bed long enough to feel frustrated and you don't have an immediate way to kind of relieve that frustration. Get out of bed, do something calming and relaxing and go back to bed when you feel sleepy again,
Kristel (Guest Introduction)
If you're looking to wake up feeling more rested, or you want to be able to fall asleep more easily.
You're going to learn a lot from today's episode with Diane Macedo. Diane is the author of a new book, the Sleep fix practical, proven and surprising solutions for insomnia, snoring shift work and more. She's an anchor and correspondent for ABC news appearing on Good morning America, World news tonight, Nightline and more. And she's also the anchor for ABC news Live.
She has so many wonderful insights to share and sometimes some counterintuitive recommendations to help you have a restful night sleep to help you navigate insomnia and to feel your best. I'm so very excited to share this with you. Let's jump into it and welcome Diane to the show.
Diane, I'm super excited to have you here. Thank you so much for joining me.
Diane:
Kristel I was so excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Kristel:
My pleasure. So you have a lot going on. You are going to be coming out of maternity leave. You have your new book, and I would just love for you to share a little bit about your background, what you're currently up to, what you're excited about these days?
Diane:
Yeah. I am a busy little bee, which is usually the case. So I am the daytime anchor for ABC news live, which is ABC news is digital platform. I also am a correspondent and anchor for the network itself. So I do shows like Good morning America, world news tonight at Nightline, all that good stuff in addition to anchoring on the digital channel.
And I decided. Probably about two years ago to undertake a side project, to write a book that had been sort of swirling around my head for years and finally released step up this December and the book's called the sleep fix. And it's all about how do I identify and overcome obstacles that are keeping you from sleeping.
And it originated from my own sleep problems. Cause I spent years struggling to sleep and I just kept reading and hearing all this stuff about how important sleep was, which just made me more worried about the fact that I wasn't getting enough, which, and then those worries just made it harder for me to sleep.
And I was like, I don't need to hear any more about how important sleep is. I need someone to tell me how to get more sleep. I’m trying and nothing I'm trying is working here. And I had kind of tried all the conventional advice. And so in sort of becoming a sleep nerd and reading sleep textbooks and interviewing sleep experts and looking at sleep research, I found answers that worked for me and they worked for me really quickly.
I was working the overnight shift at the time, which everyone told me I would have to quit my job in order to sleep well again. But I loved my job. I did didn't want to quit. So in about three weeks in following some of the stuff I found and kind of the academic sleep literature, I was sleeping while again, in about three weeks in the middle of the day, which is very difficult to do.
And yeah, I was just surprised at how quickly it worked how practical some of this stuff was and how different it was to all the stuff that I had been trying, and that I heard out there and sort of the sleep site Geist. And so, yeah, I just kept thinking, well, why isn't anybody talking about this stuff?
And so eventually with all, you know, many more interviews, a lot more research. And so on later I kind of wrote this book. That's kind of putting together sleep tips from experts, all across sleep science. And here we are with the sleep fixed now. And so in the meantime, I ended up getting pregnant with my second child.
And so I released the book just a few weeks after giving birth to my daughter, which was not the original plan, but you know, you make it work. And so yeah, life has been very busy, but we're so grateful to have her. I'm so grateful to have a book out in the world and here we are. Sometimes the plates are all spinning and you just do your best to keep them all in the air.
And that's what it feels like sometimes right now, but there are good problems to have. I feel really fortunate right now.
Kristel:
Amazing. Yeah. I actually, I was chatting a while back with a friend who did my integrative medicine fellowship with me and she is a doctor. She has kids. She teaches residents. She's like overachiever to every extent and she shares something like you have all these think of life. Like you have all these different balls, some are glass and some are rubber. Some you can like set to the side, they're going to be fine. And others, you have to kind of take a little bit better care of. So I feel like you're in that right now. That all these things, the laundry can wait, this can wait. That can wait. And you got to just roll with it. But congratulations on everything. That's really, really exciting. And this is going to help a lot of people. So I know sleep is so incredibly important. And like you said, we hear this, we know sleep is so important, but knowing that sometimes.
can add stress because they're like, oh no, I haven't fallen asleep yet. How much time? How much time will I have if I fall asleep right now and that active state is not conducive to sleeping well. So I would love to hear what suggestions you have for people who do have busy lives, who do have a lot going on and how can they calm their minds or maybe that's. I mean, I'd love to hear what your thoughts are. Is it about calming your mind or is it something else or a combination?
Diane:
Yes and no. So one, that active state is the foundation of insomnia. And I think a lot of people dismiss that and don't think of themselves as having insomnia. Number of times, I've heard, oh, I don't have insomnia.
I just have trouble falling asleep at night, or I just don't sleep. Or I just wake up a lot throughout the night. And generally speaking, those are descriptions of insomnia, you know, unless something else is causing those wake ups. But I think a lot of people dismisse that sort of activated state where your mind is going a mile a minute and maybe you're anxious about something and that's keeping you awake.
They kind of dismiss that as something that's, that's just how I am. That's just how I'm built. That's just whatever. And it's like, no, if that happens consistently that's insomnia and you know what that's okay. Because guess what? Insomnia is treatable, but so many people, including myself, have these difficulties and we just dismiss them as something that we have to accept and something that's just the way we're built and so on and so forth.
And we think there's nothing we can do about it. And there's actually a ton we can do about it. And the ironic and kind of sad part is often what we need to do to alleviate that cause of not sleeping in many ways is opposite. Not just different too, but sometimes opposite to what the conventional sleep advice that we hear about all the time tells us to do. So, a lot of us are trying to fix our sleep. And I was like textbook case of this. I was trying all of these things to fix my sleep. And now I know that all of those things I was doing to try to fix my sleep were actually making me worse. And that was one of the reasons why I felt the need to write this book, because it was like, we need to realize that not everybody who doesn't sleep enough. Doesn't sleep enough as a result of not spending enough time in bed. There are a lot of people who do spend enough time in bed and just have a really hard time sleeping once they're actually there either because they have trouble falling asleep, they have trouble staying asleep, or they're just not getting good quality sleep.
Something's interfering with their sleep overnight. So they think they're getting enough sleep, but they still feel sleepy all day long. And that's who really, I wrote this book for. If you’re just burning the candle at both ends, or like I did for many years just choosing not to get enough sleep because you're too busy partying or studying or working or doing whatever else, you know, that the solution to your problem is that you just need to spend more time in bed.
And while that's sometimes easier said than done, that's a completely different issue than if you do try to get to sleep, then you have a hard time doing it for reasons unknown to you. And so that's who I wrote the book for it's for people who have trouble sleeping and not to hear more about why we need to sleep, but want to learn about how to sleep better.
Kristel:
Yes. Okay. So I would love to hear some specific recommendations. My curiosity is peaked and like, what are these things? Because sometimes like what you said, like, if you're doing all the right things, sometimes I feel like that adds pressure and yet it's overthinking and like creates more of the same problem.
Cause you're like putting all of this like stress and power into this has to go perfectly and that just, it doesn't help. So I would love to hear what your thoughts are on that and what you recommend?
Diane:
Well you nailed it, and you have a much better understanding of this already than I did when I was going through it.
And so what a lot of us will do is we try to kind of create the perfect bedtime routine. And we try to, we've got the lavender oil in the pillow and we're taking Bumble beds and we're drinking the teas. We're doing all of these things and here's the problem. We are working so hard to make sleep happen, that all that effort and thought we're putting into our sleep, essentially it puts your brain into work mode.
So now, instead of kind of winding down at the end of the day, we're telling our brain “Chop chop. It's time to work. We've got to do all those things in our sleep checklist.” And now our brain, instead of winding down, it starts to rev up and that makes sleep harder. And the other really interesting part, I think about the cause of insomnia and I'm going to get to solutions, but I just want people to understand the mechanism that's happening underneath the hood.
If you spend enough time awake and worrying, awakened, frustrated in bed. Your brain has this kind of mental autopilot feature that recognizes patterns and it starts to prepare for what's coming next. So you're not always actively thinking about every little thing that you have to do. So if you walk into your favorite restaurant, you might start to salivate as soon as you walk in the door.
Because even though the food's not in front of you yet, your brain is like, oh, I know what this place is. This is where we're going to eat delicious food. And it will start to do that automatically. To kind of be able to dedicate more energy to things you have to actively think about. That same mental autopilot feature kicks in if we regularly go to bed and stay awake in bed and especially worry about things in bed. After a while bed becomes cue to stay awake and worry because your brain is like, oh, I know what we're about to do. We're about to go to that place where we stay awake and worry. And so instead of becoming a cue for sleep bed becomes a cue for wakefulness and for work, essentially.
And this is why a lot of people might experience the phenomenon where you're kind of dozing off on the couch. Like the heavy highlights you're truly sleepy and you're like, okay, I'm sleeping. I feel it. I'm going straight to bed. And as soon as your head hits the pillow, you're wide awake. Your mind is going a mile a minute.
And you're thinking about anything from some stressful conversation you have that didn't go so well to what you're going to be for Halloween in five months. Yeah. And that's something called conditioned arousal. It's the calling card for chronic and stuff insomnia. And in order to sleep better, if you have this problem, you have to undo that association.
And so one of my favorite techniques, you kind of want to attack this from both angles, but I'll start with the kind of trying to turn the temperature down the volume down on those racing thoughts. My favorite technique for this is something called constructive worry, or I like to call it a worry list or brain dump, and it's super simple.
You just take a notebook, you divide the page down the center on the left-hand side, you write down anything that's on your mind, just dump it all out onto the page, like a list. And then on the right-hand side, you just write down the very next step to resolving that issue. You don't need to know the ultimate solution, just whatever you can do next to kind of move it along in the right direction.
And that might be as simple as calling a friend who knows more about that issue than you do, or research that issue on X website. If it's something that's out of your control, you have to accept and move on, write that down. And when you don't have any, you can't think of anything else that's on your mind, then you're done.
I want people to understand that I got to a point where ambient didn't help me sleep anymore. And so for me, I was like, well, ambient doesn't help me. But this notebook thing is going to. Super skeptical, right? But it worked. And here's why this is such an effective technique. One. If you're the kind of person who sort of go, go, go, doesn't give yourself an opportunity to kind of process your thoughts and feelings in the day as so many of us are.
Right? Cause as soon as we sit still, we take our phones out. And so we're still occupying our brains with something else. Bed is probably the first opportunity that you're giving yourself to process your thoughts and feelings of the day, which is a totally natural thing for our brain to want to. So by doing this activity before bed, you will alleviate the need to do it in bed.
And if you do it consistently, your brain really quickly it starts to form a new association where, oh, this is where we stay awake and worry. Not when my head hits the pillow. And a lot of the reasons why we get repetitive thoughts that is just our brain trying to remind us to deal with that issue. And so once it's written down on the page, you alleviate the need for that reminder.
And then finally it also the exercise itself gets you kind of shifted to thinking about solutions rather than just ruminating on problems, which so many of us do when we're stuck in that insomnia cycle. And so most of the clinicians that I spoke to that treat insomnia said they recommend their patients do this for two to three weeks.
And then your brain just sort of starts doing it automatically. And I didn't know that at the time, but I ended up doing it for two weeks because that was what I found as well. I felt like I didn't need to do the notebook exercise anymore because it's like my brain just automatically started doing this and finally got the memo that sleep head on pillow means it's time to sleep. Not it's time to think and worry. And then the other part of the equation is you want to boost your sleep drive because we sometimes think of sleep as like, oh, we're flipping a switch so that we fall asleep. And it's not like that. I like to think of it more like a sleep stall. When you fall asleep, all that's happening is your sleep drive is overpowering your wake drive, but when we're stressed and anxious and feeling kind of strong emotions that powers up our wake drive, which makes it harder for our sleep drive to compete. Now, what we often do to make up for that, because we're always hearing so much about the detriments of sleep debt on our health, because we then try to make up for the sleep loss of a bad night by sleeping in by napping or by going to bed too early.
But your sleep drive is determined by how much time you have spent a week. It's like hunger, right? The longer you go without eating, the more hungry you feel, the sleep drive works the same way. So if you start sleeping in or napping or trying to go to bed earlier than their usual bedtime, all that means is your sleep drive now is depleted. You're not that sleepy when you're actually trying to go to bed. And that makes it even harder for your sleep drive to compete, especially if you're still in this kind of stressed, anxious state of am I going to sleep or not? Right. So ideally you want to attack this from both ends.
One,you want to do an exercise, whether it's constructive worry or something else that helps you relax and you want to boost your sleep drive and you do that by kind of the opposite. Instead of going to bed early, I like to call this a reverse curfew. You sort of set a time and you say something a little bit later than your usual bedtime, and you say I'm not going to go to bed.
I'm not allowed to go until at least X time, 11:00 PM, whatever it is. Yeah. And there's something about, instead of trying to force yourself to sleep kind of the reverse psychology of now trying to challenge yourself to stay awake, alleviates the performance anxiety that sometimes fuels insomnia. And it also helps to ensure that you're actually sleeping when you're going to bed.
And if that reverse curfew hits and you still don't feel sleepy at all, don't go. Go to bed when you actually feel sleepy. Yeah. And the hard part of that is you still want to wake up at the same time every morning. So pick the wake up time that you can be fairly consistent with within, let's say 45 minutes that you can stick to a weekend and weekday, if at all possible.
And no matter how bad the night was. You keep waking up at that time, you drag your butt out of bed, you go do your thing and you try not to think about it too much, because what happens is now the next night when you go to sleep, your sleep drive is that much higher and that makes it that much easier for you to be able to fall asleep and stay asleep.
And our bodies have this kind of natural recovery mechanism that if we are going to bed and we are coming from a place of sleep debt and sleep deprivation. How our bodies naturally prioritize deep sleep and REM sleep over the lighter stages of sleep. So if you go to bed, sleep deprived and you've finally kind of broken the back of this insomnia cycle, your body will start.
Even if you're just sleeping your normal amount, your body will help you fall asleep faster, and it will prioritize that deep and REM sleep. So you're kind of automatically recovering from that sleep debt, even if you're only sleeping your normal amount. And I say this because a lot of people. I feel like they have to nap or get that extra sleep in order to make up for the sleep loss.
And if even after combating your insomnia and you feel like you're sleeping well at night, you still are one of those people who either has a hard time napping during the day, or you feel like if you do, it interferes with your ability to sleep at night, don't feel like you have to get that extra sleep and just focus on getting your normal night amount of sleep. Whatever it is that you need. If you're a six hour person, seven hour person, eight an hour person, whatever it is. And when you get back into that form of healthy sleep, even just your normal amount, your body will automatically start recovering for that sleep debt. And you will start feeling so much better.
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Kristel:
Okay. This was extremely helpful. And I think it's interesting cause it is a. A little bit on what you read about and what you hear about, but it makes a lot of sense.
So let's say that someone is doing this and working up to it, but they still have the occasional night where their head hits the pillow. And it's been, maybe it was a stressful day. Maybe they have a big event the next day, who knows. If they're in that situation, in bed and they're not falling asleep.
What would you suggest there? I know something that I've tried if I've had a hard time falling asleep is instead of worrying about it, like, well, will I, will, will I not? It's like, okay. Maybe I do. Maybe I don't. It's like just taking the pressure off of myself. Helps me a lot. And so I don't know what your thoughts are on that. If you have any tips.
Diane:
Well, I think that's great first off and I want people to realize that everybody has a bad night every now and then. And so it's no big deal. Like, I feel like we've been programmed to think that if we have one bad night, that's it we're doomed. We're going to get Alzheimer's. Our health is going to deteriorate.
We're going to be ugly and we can't function. Right. We're all programmed to be able to recover from short stints of sleep deprivation. And there is research scientific research, and there's anecdotal evidence to prove that, all of which I detail in the book. So one, there's no need to freak out about having a bad night and despite how much you might get into your head about, oh no, I'm not gonna be able to function.
I'm not going to be able to do this. I'm not gonna be able to do that. We're actually going to be fine. It's often just our anxiety that then gets in the way. And that becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. That said when you are in that state, it can be anything that will help you kind of relax. And if you can still in bed, take on that attitude of like, if I sleep, I sleep. If I don't, I don't. I am just going to enjoy this nice period of rest. And if you can do that calmly and lay your head on the pillow and close your eyes. Yeah, appreciate the rest for what it is. Great. However, I know many of us, especially if we're dealing with this all the time, that's so much easier said than done.
Like I couldn't do that. I couldn't just appreciate the rest. All I could think about was why am I not sleeping? So if you can't just appreciate, stay relaxed in bed, even when you're not sleeping. And if something like for me, for example, putting on a podcast or an audio book on a sleep timer. Sometimes that can help me just to like take the edge off.
And then I kind of doze off while listening to the podcast or while listening to the audio book, if that works for you. Great, set the sleep timer to however long you think it normally takes you to fall asleep and give yourself a little bit of a buffer. So maybe set it for like 45 minutes. And if that helps you, great! If these things don't work, then I think the golden rule for sleep in general is if you are awake in bed long enough to feel frustrated and you don't have an immediate way to kind of relieve that frustration, get out of bed, do something calming and relaxing and go back to bed when you feel sleepy again.
Yeah. And calming and relaxing also goes hand in hand with enjoyable. And I think that's key because so many times, even some sleep experts will say things like, oh, read something. Mind you, this usually comes from the sleep experts who are not experts in treating insomnia, but they will often say things like, oh, read an instruction manual.
Something really do something really boring. And yes, boredom can foster sleep, but boredom can also foster frustration. And so if you're going to read the phone book and then hate yourself for having to read the phone book. That becomes a problem because even if it works in a moment, now you have something else to fear when you're going to bed.
You're like, oh God, I really hope I don't wake up in the middle of the night. Cause then I'm going to have to read the effing phone book again. And those fears, power up your wake drive and make it harder for you to sleep. So my favorite example of this was a friend of mine who found that reading books, which is most people find that reading book helps them sort of calm down.
He was like, I like reading too much where I would read. And the next thing I knew it was three o'clock in the morning. I was still reading my book. So he started reading cook books because he said, they're interesting enough that I'm into it. I don't feel like I'm trudging along and doing this as a chore, but they're not so engaging that I don't feel like they're stimulating me and waking me up even more.
And so that for him was his thing and people will find their thing. What's stimulating for some person is relaxing for another and vice versa. So I don't like to give like blanket do this and watching TV is fine too. If you want to watch a show, that's fine. I think we've all become really afraid of screens and sleep.
If you wake up in the middle of the night, you want to watch a TV show. I haven't met a single insomnia clinician that doesn't totally support that. So yeah. Just find something that works for you to just kind of take the edge off, stop worrying about your sleep, but still be able to recognize your sleep cues, that when you do start feeling more calm and you do start feeling more sleepy, you notice it.And you're like, okay, now I'm going to go back to bed.
And if you go back to bed, do you still feel like you're getting elevated again and you still can't sleep, then get out of bed again. But remember you keep that wake up time and the next day you still get up and you still go about your day because the next day it's going to make it that much easier for you to sleep again.
And sometimes this will take a little while of going through that cycle before you get to that stage, where your head hits the pillow and you're falling asleep and you know, in a satisfactory amount of time, let's say 20 minutes. And then, but once you do, if you then feel like you're not getting enough sleep, then you can start moving that bedtime, that reverse curfew. So to speak earlier and earlier until you feel like you're getting enough sleep, but you're still sleeping efficiently.
Kristel:
Got it. Okay. This is really, really helpful. And I'm curious what your thoughts are on the amount of time? I think it's an individual thing. I know for me, like I tend to feel my best if I'm around like seven hours, eight hours. I get that. I'm like, yeah, this is good. And I've talked with some entrepreneurs, oh my gosh. Who they can like do their thing on like four or five hours, which I just think is like, I don't know how that's done, but I would love to hear your thoughts on this and what you've learned throughout your research.?
Diane:
According to the national sleep foundation survey, which is what most medical professionals look to for this. Most adults will fall somewhere between the seven and nine hour range, but that same exact survey says it may be appropriate for some adults to range anywhere between five hours and 11 hours.
And so is this interesting because we all know at this point, or most of us at least know about the repercussions of not getting enough sleep. Sleep is crucial to pretty much everything in our health. So if you don't get enough, yeah, the repercussions are pretty big, but nobody talks about the repercussions of trying to force yourself to get too much sleep.
And so this whole like recommended 8 hours. It's a myth and it's a destructive myth because for someone who needs six hours sleep. If they try to force themselves to get eight hours, they're going to give themselves insomnia because either your sleep sort of been fragments over that amount of time, if you start spending eight hours in bed and you sleep lighter and you might start waking up a lot throughout the night or having difficulty falling asleep or having difficulty staying asleep and so on.
And if it manifests in you spending more time awake and frustrated in bed, now you give yourself insomnia. And now the amount of sleep you're getting actually starts to deplete because you're so riled up in bed, that all of the things that you and I just discussed start to happen. Now you actually get less sleep than you need instead of getting more.
And so I think it's important for people to realize that we don't all need eight hours and you want to gauge by how you feel, not how many hours you've got and the same works the other way around, because I think there are a lot of people walking around right now thinking, oh, well I get my eight hours of sleep.
So I can't possibly have a sleep disorder. And what they don't realize is they have what I called a secret sleep disorders. Something like sleep apnea, for example, which interferes with your sleep while you're sleeping only, you don't notice that it's happening. And so you wake up in the morning thinking you've got a full night sleep but you didn't. And now you're kind of sleepy all day. You're functioning from a place of sleep deprivation, which is dangerous. If you, for example, get behind the wheel of a car, but also dangerous to your just general health. It makes you much more susceptible to lots of other medical conditions. And so I think there are a lot of people running around thinking that they couldn't possibly have a sleep disorder because they're getting the “recommended eight hours” not realizing that they're not really getting enough sleep.
So it's really about how you feel. If you're walking around all day. And you feel like you need a nap. If you're that person who tends to doze off in waiting rooms or doze off on the subway or doze off, if you put the TV on and sit down any moment of stillness, even during the day, you're vulnerable to kind of dozing off or feeling really sleepy. That's a sign that something's wrong. You're not getting enough sleep.
And if you don't know why you're not getting enough sleep, then it's time to get checked. To see if you have a sleep disorder that's disturbing. On the flip side, if you're someone who walks through ground, he feels generally good. Your energy levels are good. You feel good? And that's a sign that you're probably getting enough sleep. Even if it's not the “recommended eight hours.” I will caution this though, in response to your entrepreneurs who are getting four hours. It's a very, very rare number of people who fall into that sort of five-hour low end of the range.
It's just caused by a gene mutation actually. And so if you think you're a five-hour person, you're probably not. And I think there are a lot of people trying to convince themselves that they are on that sort of low end of the spectrum and trying to force themselves in the opposite direction. They're say a six or seven hour person trying to force themselves to get five hours and trying to convince themselves that they function well.
And some of us can function really well in a sleep deprived state and other people can. And so you may be someone who functions pretty well, but that doesn't mean you're getting the amount of sleep that you need, and that lack of sleep can still have repercussions. So four hours is a really small amount of sleep and I caution anyone who's trying to sort of force themselves to fit into that box, that when you're that level of sleep deprived, you're essentially drunk sometimes worse than drunk. So for a lot of these people running major companies, trying to make really major decisions on four hours of sleep, like you're kind of operating from a place of, you might as well be hammered.
So first I don't want people to use the techniques in the book that are aimed at helping you sleep more efficiently. To try to force themselves to sleep efficiently beyond the point where they're actually getting enough sleep, because you're really not going to help yourself. And you're actually not going to be.
I think you think you're saving yourself time, but you're not because when you're in that state, it makes it difficult to focus. It makes it difficult to do so many things. And so all these tasks that you will do much more quickly when you're getting enough sleep will take you a lot longer. So in the end you actually don't save yourself any time.
Kristel:
So interesting. And this has got me thinking too, like what is the right amount of sleep for me? Cause I think about it sometimes, if I oversleep. I feel tired. You know, it's like, if it's too much, I feel groggy. There's like this perfect middle ground. And then some nights, if we're busy doing stuff and I think I'm going to be really tired tomorrow, I wake up and I feel great.
Diane:
So, you know, it's a range. Not only is it a range between people, but we range individually. The seasons sometimes people sleep more in a little bit more in the winter than they generally do. And also among other things, exercise in addition to staying awake, exercise can boost your sleep drive. It actually creates more of the chemical called adenosine that makes us sleepy and powers up our sleep drive.
So if you had a really strenuous workout, if you're training for the marathon or something like that, you might need more sleep on one day than you do on the other. So just because your generally Oh, I'm a six hour person, I'm a seven hour person or whatever. That doesn't mean that every day you need seven hours,some day, you might need six and a half hours, another day, you might need eight. So I discourage people from being really rigid about, I need to get X hours of sleep or I can't get more than X hours of sleep.
Kristel:
Okay. So this has been amazing. Diane, I've learned a ton and I'm going to put a link to your book in the episode details, links to your social and episode details.
We are coming towards the end. I'm going to do a quick wellness lightning round with you. But before we do that, anything else you would like to add? This has been so fun.
Diane:
You know, I just want people to know that if you have trouble falling asleep, if you have trouble staying asleep, or if you feel like you sleep fine, but you still feel sleepy all day.
You don't just have to accept that, you don't just have to go through life saying, well, that's just how I am. All of those things are assigned that there's a problem if they happen consistently. And most of those problems are curable. And if they're not curable, they are treatable and getting those treatments, addressing these issues.
Sometimes it's a DIY solution, sometimes only professional help. And my book tries to guide you through when to know the difference between the two, but either way, whether it's because you need professional help or whether you're trying some of these DIY solutions. Addressing these issues can legitimately change your life.
And in some cases, this is not hyperbole can save your life. So I just want people to know they don't have to struggle. And they don't have to accept this. There are answers out there and they can be a game changer.
Kristel:
Amazing. Well, that definitely is going to help a lot of people. And so let's get into the wellness lightning round.
So the first question I have for you is what is a self-care practice that you do on a regular basis? That's like a non-negotiable for you.
Diane:
I love a nice long bath and that started. I mean, I've always liked the bath, but that started more prevalently after I had my son. And so I think there's something about it to me, that's also a bit of an escape. It's like the one place where I have silence and where nobody comes in to disturb me, my husband, and sort of wrangles the kids and keeps them from coming in. And so I will sometimes take an hour long bath and it's just, it's kind of my time more regularly, I think silence, which is strange because I was never someone who craved silence. So. I'm a very, like, I'm a people person. I like being surrounded people. I like talking all the time, et cetera. And I used to be someone who never really had silence. I would play music. I would play a podcast. I would play something at all times. And now I find myself craving silence. And so I do have this kind of non-negotiable period of time every single day.
And it's not scheduled sometimes it's in the morning. Sometimes it's at night, sometimes it's in the middle of the day and I kind of do it subconsciously, but I always have a portion of my day that I spend in complete silence and I think that's like kind of my version of meditation. I just kind of, I get to have some time with my thoughts, which I really appreciate.
Kristel:
Yeah, so nice. And then the last question that I have for you, knowing what you know today, what advice would you give to yourself from 10 years ago?
Diane:
I think, oh gosh, I want to make it about sleep, but that sounds weird because I just wrote a book and I don't want people to think that I'm just saying it to promote the book.
I think to back myself more and to realize that I don't need to make myself small, to make other people feel comfortable because I think as women, especially, I think there's a lot of sort of, we sometimes feel out of place speaking up, but you know, every sentence I say starts with, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
I just wanted to add that. And so that's still something that I'm working on now, but I wish I even recognized it as a problem 10 years ago, because I used to not even notice that, that was an issue. And now I realize how many times I did do that and I kept silence and I didn't back myself up or, or I, you know, I defer to somebody else when I shouldn't have, and I missed opportunities because I didn't follow my gut.
And I listened to bad advice from somebody else that I shouldn't have. And so, yeah, I think that would be my advice to myself.
Kristel:
Yeah. That's amazing advice. And this has been incredible. I'm so grateful for you taking the time to share all of your insights today. Thank you so much, Diane.
Diane:
Oh, Kristel thanks so much for having me.